The Challenge
With all eyes on No Time To Die in the hope that James Bond would bring the nation (and world) back to the big screen in a BIG way, Universal wanted to really dominate the entertainment landscape with huge takeover activations and a campaign that could not be missed. This was all about creating a huge cultural encouraging immediacy to see over the opening weekend.
Bauer created a campaign aligned perfectly with Universal’s strategic marketing pillars, activating a total media-first activation that authentically reached audiences across our audio portfolio.
Knowing that Bond music is so iconic and synonymous with the obsession for the franchise, we launched Bond 24/7, a dedicated pop-up station for the week of release. Bond 24/7 was comprised of music and scores from across the decades, presented by a host of our biggest names across a multitude of Bauer stations, including Jordan and Perri from KISS, Dave Berry from Absolute, Ronan and Harriet from Magic and Fleur East from Hits Radio.
The station’s editorial content was built around familiarising an audience with what they know and love about the Bond series, brought through the lens of our biggest influencers as they celebrated their favourite moments, songs, characters and iconic scenes from the franchise. This content was peppered throughout with film talent to truly make it an all-encompassing Bond destination.
This approach was completely unprecedented for Bauer as we not only brought our diverse range of brands together to simultaneously promote one moment, but also leveraged a diverse range of talent to present together on one station.
The idea
The campaign was supported with midnight screenings on day of launch, as a host of presenters watched the film first and stayed up all night to link live into our breakfast shows across the country. In another first, we created total takeover weekends across four of our networks including KISS, Magic, Absolute and Hits with activations in every single daypart to ensure the release was positioned as a truly iconic cultural moment
Execution
The partnership not only delivered phenomenal results through audience engagement, with streaming hours up 50%, but Universal directly credited it as instrumental in the UK’s box opening weekend box office.
The film broke previous opening-day record holders with a three-day weekend total of £21m – ahead of Skyfall and Spectre – and was the second biggest opening of a film at the UK & Ireland box-office ever.